One of the biggest dreams of every admission director, besides enrolling a full class on May 1, is finding the right students for their university.
You spend your days and nights searching the country, attending college fairs, purchasing names, turning over every stone to find them. In your wildest dreams you would imagine these students just appearing in your admission office, eager to learn more about your academic programs and campus life. Pure fantasy, right? But what if I told you that this dream could become reality?
But first, I want to take you back…
Over 20 years ago, when I was a young admission counselor, my colleagues and I would discuss things like whether or not test scores were necessary, “helicopter” parents, the long days and nights for little pay standing behind a table at a college fair, reading stacks of admission folders (yes, back in the day there used to be actual folders to read for each applicant!), and the hundreds of other topics that admission folks are still debating and talking about today. I bring this up because no matter what year it is, whether it’s 1994 or 2016, the college admission game will always come down to a simple premise: you finding the right student and that student finding you.
A student somehow finds your school and decides they want more information. You then send them a glossy brochure filled with facts and figures about how great your university is and why they should attend. If there’s a match, they come and visit, and then apply and hopefully enroll. That all sounds really simple—but any seasoned admission professional knows it’s not. Countless other things need to happen between that initial interest and enrollment. The student and their family need to know if they can they afford your tuition, bring their car to campus as a freshman, check out your residence halls, and find the right major, just to name a few.
Okay, back to the present. I want you to close your eyes for a moment. (Don’t fall asleep, though. I know you are tired because it’s yield season, and you are lying awake at night staring at the ceiling worrying about your incoming class. Stay with me…) Just imagine for a second that there was a simple way for you to put your university in front of prospective students who were not only interested in your school but were also interested in an academic program you offer, such as Education, Business, Health and Medicine, Science and Engineering, or Visual/Performing Arts. Let’s take it a step further: What if you are a university affiliated with a religion (Catholic or Christian) and you want to reach students looking to attend a school that is religiously centered? How about reaching Transfer, Multicultural, and even International students?
You might think this is only a dream, but it’s not. You could open your e-mail each week, and these prospective students would appear right in front of you on a handy spreadsheet. Even better, they would all be eagerly waiting to hear from you. That’s the magic, the dream, of PC&U.
There are hundreds of admission offices across the country, big and small, public and private, that use our Private and Public Colleges & Universities Platforms. Each week we deliver to their inbox hundreds of sophomore, junior, and senior high school students for their prospect funnel. These students specifically chose their college because they were featured in one of our platforms (from academic-interest platforms like Science and Engineering to geographic-based platforms that target specific areas of the country—and everything in between).
So if you are looking to find the right student—and you want the right student to find you—we can make your dream a reality. Contact us today to find out more.
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